Shop 4/ 1 Dawson St Strathalbyn SA 5255 0438847329 tbkstrathalbyn@gmail.com Tuesdays to Saturdays 10am to 4pm

Tag: Bookblog

Taylor and Jake

The Book Keeper1 Comment on Taylor and Jake

J and T.png

…are the remarkable remarkables. They heave the door open and gust through, no time for greetings. Taylor considers all books, particularly horse books, Jake considers large books, particularly (today), books about The French Revolution or Madam Pompadour. They sail back and forth in the wind, hailing Grandma who waits on the beach and who greets all interests, all choices, as fine and wise. And so there is no place in literature where these children will not venture, and no shape, proportion, heft, vintage or bay that will stay unexplored. When they call out from another room, they call from far away, because they are. They are wise. They read what they want to read and reject what they don’t. The spread the books out and announce each title kindly for me. Their faces are lit lanterns.

The English Patient

The Book Keeper1 Comment on The English Patient

2018-07-15 18.51.16-1.jpg

A lady is in the shop reading to herself The Very Hungry Caterpillar and I am reading to myself The English Patient. She shows her friend the book and her friend says: Oh, I remember that one. And the reading lady says: don’t we all…and they are smiling. Then they look at my book and tell me that I ought to see the film.

My friend says that Michael Ondaatje is slippery, that is, his writing is slippery, luminous and unpredictable so that suddenly he has described something… like translated light and there is no retreat…

…the blue and other colours, shivering in the haze and sand. The faint glass noise and the diverse colours and the regal walk and his face like a lean dark gun…

And when reading such incandescent sentences, you know that there is more at play that just those sentences, meanings and truths as large as the world itself following behind your reading, towering over your page, creaking gently behind, on and on and on.

A little boy has chosen a book called How to Draw Monsters and he holds it up to show me, he points significantly toward the monster on the cover. He comes over to whisper to me that he is going to draw these now, but bigger ones.

My friend said that Michael Ondaatje is an incomparable writer.

An old lady tells me she has read every book in the Outlander Series and now intends to collect them in hardcover and then she will read them all again. She said she has lived these characters and died with them every day when she reads for hours before dinnertime. I show her The English Patient, but she has never heard of it.

My friend said that Michael Ondaatje has written a number of other books, not just The English Patient. And they are all worth pursuit. (He has come in to see me for poetry but there is nothing sufficient here today).

A mother buys Thea Stilton: The Journey to Atlantis for her daughter who is about 10 years old and she leaves with the book balanced on her head and her eyes closed so that she runs into her brother in the doorway and he says Oh man, oh man, what are you…

The English Patient is a book that does not seem to contain many words.

A man comes through the door, hurrying, nervous of the time. He has leant a shovel against the window as he comes in and his boots are covered in cement. He takes his hat off and says the weather is a cow. Then he asks for Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, his favourite book, he wants to read it again and he explains how this book is one of the best, possibly the best in the world. I show him The English Patient and he says he has never heard of it.

The English Patient is unloud and sufficient and simple and impossibly complex, and tonight I will finish it, reading the same startling way I way I did last night, taking in Cairo, the indigo markets, the minarets and the charcoal and the aching hearts and listening to The Rachmaninoff 3 at the same time and Max there with me, banging a toy water buffalo on the keyboard and wanting me to choose Duplo instead.

 

The Reading Challenge

The Book Keeper2 Comments on The Reading Challenge

Read Wildly Reading Challenge.png

If I was to take part in a reading challenge, I would attempt this one. I made it because it pushes me to read way beyond my known borders. And while I thought I was a wide roaming reader of sorts, it turns out that I’m not. I have also not yet found titles for the whole list.

Reading across from the top right-hand corner:

  1. A manga title –
  2. History book by a woman writer – Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong
  3. Translated from Japanese –
  4. An Indian writer – The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
  5. A Virago title – South Riding by Winifred Holtby
  6. Ancient Greek literature – The Birds by Aristophanes
  7. A New York Review Classic – The Invention of Morel by Aldopho Bioy Casares
  8. Beatrix Potter – The Tale of Jeremy Fisher
  9. Book 1 of a Science Fiction Series – Wool by Hugh Howey
  10. An Australian Indigenous writer – Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
  11. A children’s picture book -The Wonder Thing by Libby Hathorn
  12. Middle East Book Award –
  13. An epistolary novel –
  14. Short stories written by a woman – The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro
  15. A book written in the 1700s –
  16. A Science fiction classic – Dune by Frank Herbert
  17. A book that feature vampires – The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
  18. A book over 1000 pages – Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
  19. A banned book – Forever Amber by Kathleen Windsor (Banned in fourteen states in the US, and by Australia in 1945 as: a collection of bawdiness, amounting to sex obsession)
  20. An Australian play – Summer of the Seventeenth Doll by Ray Lawler
  21. A book of poetry, single poet – The Poetry of Pablo Neruda
  22. Any translated book into English – My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
  23. Any Shakespeare play – Othello
  24. A fantasy stand alone novel – The Princess Bride by William Goldman
  25. Fiction translated from Chinese – The Garlic Ballads by Mo Yan

 

 

The Couple Who Came in Together

The Book Keeper2 Comments on The Couple Who Came in Together

Kieta Nuij 2 The Couple.jpg

This couple came in, came in very together and walked around the shop together and nodded over the books together. They hardly said anything.

Sometimes I heard them murmuring and laughing about something but only briefly. They were in the shop for ages, spending time in all the sections, reading even the children’s books silently and smiling over them. They spent a long time with a book by Jorge Borges called The Book of Sand. They talked and talked about that one. When they got to the science fiction they did not handle any of the books. They stood and looked up and down the titles, sometimes they said something to each other but they did not pull out a single book from there.

They did not buy any books at all but when they left they thanked me for having a bookshop.

Sculpture ‘The Couple’ by Kieta Nuij

The Boys at the Window

The Book KeeperLeave a Comment on The Boys at the Window

Maljavin - Sister Alexandra

The boys at the window, on a cold afternoon, very recently, were headed to Woolworths to buy things to eat. They stopped at the window of the shop and stared together at Hilary Clinton’s book, Living History.

One of the boys said: her!

The other boy answered: I know!

Then they straightened back up and continued on their way. As they left, one boy said: my mum used to always read a lot, books like that. When I got home from school she was always reading. When I was little she would always yell out like: is that you?

His friend said: like it could have been an assassin or something…

And the first boy answered: yeah!

 

Painting ‘Alexandra’ by Filipp Malyavin

Phyllis is a Gypsy

The Book Keeper1 Comment on Phyllis is a Gypsy

Sarah Lloyd

On Thursday morning, two old ladies came in from the council bus, and one of them, Phyllis, told me she must be a gypsy. She cannot go out without jewellery anywhere. When she said the word jewellery, she closed her eyes and smiled. Her friend, who is called Myra, called out from the back room that it’s true, Phyllis is a gypsy and has the jewellery in her blood.

Myra travels slowly, she has a walking frame, and when she came back to the counter, Phyllis held out her long necklace and they both of them looked at it admiringly. Myra bought a copy of My Brilliant Career which she promised to lend to Phyllis next.

They left, they were going to the bakery next, they traveled slowly past the windows in the admiring golden light, going for a cup of tea.

Artwork by Sarah Lloyd

 

The Grandaughter

The Book Keeper6 Comments on The Grandaughter

the grandaughter

Yvonne has a granddaughter who reads and reads like nothing you can believe. She is 11 years old and especially loves books about dragons and monsters of the deep. Yvonne came to to the shop and asked me: what books have I got then, about these things…

Well, it is hard to present books for a child who is not present. Possibly I don’t have anything that she would like. Yvonne said that she reads Pippi Longstocking, Roald Dahl, Harry Potter, Enid Blyton and the Septimus Heaps and the Skulduggery books. Also she liked 101 Dalmatians of course. And Heidi. And Charlotte Sometimes.

She has read all of the Series of Unfortunate Events and the Dragon Moon books and the Dragon Fire series by Chris D’Lacey. Yvonne thought her granddaughter had read Across The Nightingale Floor and all of the Narnias and the Diaries of the Wimpy Kid and the Treehouses and The Secret Garden. She has also read all of the Inkhearts. And she loved Garland from Maddigan’s Fantasia. And she loved September from The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own Making.

I said: but what is there left…

…and Yvonne said that her granddaughter, whose name is Erica would like to read Treasure Island and also was wondering what is Fifty Shades of Grey….

 

Mother and Son

The Book Keeper4 Comments on Mother and Son

reading.png

They were waiting at the door of the shop for me when I came back from the bakery.

The son, a child of about 12, came inside and began counting the Eragons, counting to make sure they were all there, which they were not. His mother wondered if it mattered. He said that it did, and he did not choose the Eragons.

They swung around, moved around, browsed gently and talked to themselves. He examined Flyte, book two of the Septimus Heap series. He said: this one. His mother asked him why he wanted that one and the boy put his hands into his pockets and leaned back and looked up through the depths of his reading and closed his eyes.

He said: it’s really good, mum.

She looked at the book kindly and nodded, ok then.

The Lamps of Joy

The Book Keeper2 Comments on The Lamps of Joy

light

Miguel arrived this afternoon tangled in the weather and a certain amount of anxiety which was extinguished when he learned that his book, The Pea Pickers had arrived. He showed me where, in his library copy of the same book, the bookmark was seated.

Outside, the weather would not be extinguished, Miguel looked through it and said: it’s coming in.

Then he told me about his grandson. He leaned forwards and backwards to tell me about this grandson. He could not stop telling me about his grandson, a curious and fabulous young man who read books and listened to music and lived interstate and was hilarious and divine. And when Miguel visited Sydney they will all eat Korean food and then Italian and then Lebanese and then Indian and then Greek and then Spanish and then African, such is the richness of the hours with the grandson.

When Miguel swung round to tell me of his grandson, his glasses were lamps of joy. When he leaned back to make room in front of the counter for the words that described only his grandson, his glasses were lamps of hilarity. And when he left, out into the rain and the rest of the day, he swung round to say goodbye and his glasses were lamps of everything.

 

When Sarah Visited the Shop Again on a Cold and Dull Day

The Book KeeperLeave a Comment on When Sarah Visited the Shop Again on a Cold and Dull Day

sarah.png

Sarah came this afternoon to pick up her Faber Book of Love Poetry and a copy of David Copperfield.

She said she has a shelf this big full of books as yet unread and it was time now to get stuck in. She looked pleased as she thought about this.

She talked, as she always does about how her mum read all her life, and how it was when her mum died and how it is now and how she, herself, once bought a costume and wore it, walking around the block on New Year’s Eve which outraged her friend and scandalised the neighbourhood.

She said that she has always been a one for standing near the edges of things, and that most of the time she’s had no choice.

She spoke disapprovingly of the Liberals, of Telstra and of Tony Abbott and described her bitterness against Jetstar, whose online booking system is a disgrace.

She said: I’m glad you’re open, it adds a bit of colour to my days, it does.

And this is a bit like Sarah herself, a survivor on the ragged, steep edges of things without a trace of self-pity, armored only with individuality and a love for classic literature and political biographies. And she adding colour to my day.

Soon she announced that it was time to get on home and sort the laundry. She promised to return and tell me what David Copperfield is actually like as there is no point in going by the movie of it. And she left with her books carefully packed, swinging the bag and herself through the door, into survival and the rest of the day.